Chapter Four

I haven’t stopped crying since the moment Laura left. In my whole life, I have never felt so dejected, so lost and afraid. It’s even worse now that I cannot see anything at all.

There’s nothing to distract me from all the accusations haunting my thoughts. I’ve spent all afternoon blaming myself.

For being too nice, too trusting, too loving, too gullible. I blame myself for being me.

Maybe if I possessed just an ounce of deviousness in my feeble little bones I would have seen this coming at some point.

If I were just a little bit as ruthless as the fables say my mother was. People would say my name with the same reverence with which they say hers.

No man would dare leave me at the altar and then command me to be locked up on my wedding day.

I wish she were alive to raise me, to teach me how to be tough and assertive while remaining delicate and beautiful. To teach me how to turn the heads of kings, warriors and elites while everyone in the room considers you the least threat. I wish she’d taught me to be powerful.

All my dad did was pamper and protect me all my life. Not that I resent him for it but look where that got me. I’ve waited all my life for someone to teach me about the world but no one came.

The closest I got was Sylvia, and now where is she?

She must be so disappointed in me after seeing that picture. But it didn’t mean she wouldn’t even look at me, or come down so I could explain myself.

Just then, the gates squeak again and I sit up quickly, wondering if the Moon Goddess had finally picked which of my prayers to answer.

A few footsteps are shuffling in the darkness, and I can see a pale light coming closer as the footsteps approach.

“Syl- Sylvia?” I call, moving closer to the gate. But as the footsteps get closer, and the burning torch with it, I soon realise that my visitor isn’t elderly nor is it a woman.

My visitor is the very man who ordered me here.

The man to whom I gave 19 years of my life to just to be rewarded with rats and smelly water soaking up my mother’s wedding dress.

Alpha Dominic Hale.

My eyes falter as the light catches those intense eyes, the way his facial bone structure all comes together when he's angry. Making him twice as handsome and ten times as terrifying. I take a step back from the bars.

“You’re here?”

“I take it, you weren’t expecting me at all.”

I blink. “Well, after how you acted this morning I assumed you’d never want to see me again-” “I didn’t.”

Silence passes over both of us.

“I wasn’t going to come here ever again. But here I am, because unlike you I never lied when I said I loved you.”

“Really? Because I’m not feeling very loved right now.”

“Don’t you dare talk back to me.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I can and can’t do after humiliating me and having me locked up in this mess on the day of my wedding!”

Another silence, this one more intense. The guard who followed him moves back a bit.

“I humiliated you?”

“Yes, how’s that even a question?”

“See, this is your problem, Kyra. Even after giving you all this time to think about what’s happened you still can’t see your faults. All you care about is where you’ve been wronged. I don’t know how I could never see just how selfish you were.”

“I don’t know either given you had nineteen years to figure it out.” “I can’t believe you don’t understand the gravity of your actions. You’ve greatly disappointed me, Kyra. The whole pack is disappointed with you.”

I shrug. “And what does that have to do with me? You created a disappointing narrative and fed it to them without speaking to me about it first and now you’re surprised they are disappointed? How about the gravity of your own actions, huh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how I walked on that aisle this morning and gave you a heart filled with patience and love and joy. Today for me was all about us, and the wonderful chapter we were walking into. Meanwhile, you gave me a heart full of deception, malice and conspiracies. This whole time while I’ve been planning a wedding, you’ve been secretly building a scaffold. That’s evil, Dominic.”

I can already see the heat rising in his cheek and temper hot and heavy in his eyes when the cell falls silent again. But he doesn’t say anything or act immediately. And then he relaxes, exhaling deeply.

That’s unsettling.

He’s pretty famous for his short temper.

“I’m really sorry you feel that way,” he says finally, his voice unnaturally soft. “Perhaps, you’d be able to make your case tomorrow…” My eyebrows furrow as I look up at him again. “…when I put you on trial.”